No One Voted For Canada’s Immigration Experiment

For decades, immigration was one of Canada’s quiet political successes. The country accepted newcomers at relatively high levels, yet largely avoided the bitter anti-immigration politics that took hold in the United States and parts of Europe. Liberal and Conservative governments disagreed about many things, but they generally maintained the same basic immigration framework: controlled entry, permanent settlement, family reunification, refugee protection, and a strong emphasis on education and skills.

That consensus did not survive because Canadians were indifferent to immigration. It survived because most people believed the system was deliberate, manageable, and broadly beneficial. Immigration was understood as a mutual decision. Newcomers chose Canada, but Canada also decided how many people would enter, which applicants would be selected, and what economic or humanitarian purpose the system was intended to serve.

In my recent conversation with Globe and Mail columnist Tony Keller, author of Borderline Chaos, he argued that Canada moved away from that model without ever having a serious national debate about what would replace it. The country did not simply increase immigration. It changed the structure of the system, shifting away from predominantly permanent, skills-based immigration toward a much larger temporary population made up of international students, postgraduate workers, and temporary foreign labour.

The result is a country now trying to manage the consequences of a policy experiment that most Canadians were never clearly asked to approve.

Canada’s modern immigration system emerged from a necessary moral transformation. Until the early 1960s, immigration policy openly discriminated on the basis of race and national origin. Canada then began dismantling those restrictions and replacing them with a points-based model that evaluated applicants according to factors such as education, work experience, language ability, and economic potential.

The principle behind the system was straightforward. Canada would no longer decide who could enter on the basis of race, but it would continue to exercise control over admission. The country would choose how many people to accept, which skills were most needed, and how immigration could support Canada’s long-term interests.

Permanent economic immigration formed the centre of the system, while family reunification and refugee protection operated alongside it. The model was imperfect, and newcomers often faced serious obstacles once they arrived. Foreign credentials were undervalued, professional barriers remained high, and governments did not always provide sufficient settlement support. Still, the system gave newcomers a clear legal status and a reasonable expectation that they could establish roots, raise families, and eventually become citizens.

That permanence mattered. It encouraged people to see themselves not as temporary labour brought in to fill a short-term vacancy, but as future Canadians expected to contribute to the country over the course of their lives.

It also helped maintain political stability. Immigration policy remained relatively consistent through the governments of Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, and Stephen Harper. There were adjustments in levels and selection criteria, but there was no dramatic ideological divide in which one party treated immigration as inherently virtuous and another treated it as inherently dangerous.

Canada welcomed more immigrants than many comparable countries while maintaining public support. That was an unusual achievement, but it depended on trust.

When Justin Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, his government entered office with a stronger preference for higher immigration. Keller said he was critical of some of the government’s early ideas, but the system did not initially appear to change in a radical way. The more consequential transformation became apparent during and after the pandemic.

Businesses began warning about labour shortages. Colleges and universities wanted more international students, who paid significantly higher tuition than domestic students. Provincial governments benefited because international tuition reduced pressure to raise taxes or increase public funding for post-secondary institutions. Employers gained access to a larger workforce, while landlords, recruiters, and immigration consultants also benefited from rapid population growth.

At the same time, influential organizations promoted the idea that Canada needed a much larger population. The Century Initiative, associated with prominent business figures including Dominic Barton and Mark Wiseman, argued that Canada should reach 100 million people by the end of the century.

Keller was careful not to describe the Century Initiative as a conspiracy. Its position was public and its advocates genuinely believed that a larger population would produce a larger economy, increase Canada’s international influence, and protect the country from demographic decline.

The central weakness in that argument was the tendency to treat population growth as a benefit in itself. A larger population almost certainly creates a larger total economy because more people work, buy goods, rent homes, and consume services. But that does not necessarily mean that the average person becomes more prosperous.

According to Keller, a group of economists consulted by then-immigration minister John McCallum warned against focusing too heavily on raw immigration numbers. They advised the government to prioritize the quality of immigration, including education, skills, and the likelihood that newcomers would raise productivity and living standards.

Canada ultimately moved in a different direction. The government increased immigration while also expanding pathways that placed less emphasis on high skills, permanent selection, and long-term economic contribution.

The most important change was the growth of Canada’s temporary population.

Under the traditional model, most immigrants arrived as permanent residents. They applied, were assessed, received legal status, and entered the country knowing they could remain if they followed the law. The newer model increasingly brought people into Canada through study permits, temporary foreign worker programs, and postgraduate work permits.

By 2023, Keller said, the number of people entering through temporary pathways had surpassed the number arriving through the regular permanent immigration system. Many of those temporary residents came as international students, but their objective was often not simply to obtain an education and return home. They hoped to work in Canada, qualify for permanent residency, and build their futures here.

That hope was understandable. Canada actively marketed itself as a place where education could lead to employment and, potentially, permanent status. Some students paid tens of thousands of dollars to attend institutions that offered weak academic value but appeared to provide access to the Canadian labour market.

The institutions received tuition. Employers gained workers. Provincial governments benefited financially. Students took on the risk.

The system created a fundamental mismatch between the number of people allowed to enter temporarily and the number of permanent residency spaces available. Keller compared it to allowing one million people into a stadium and later discovering that only 100,000 tickets were available for the concert.

The comparison captures the dilemma Canada now faces. A vast number of temporary residents have spent years studying, working, paying rent, and forming relationships here. Many reasonably hoped they would eventually qualify to stay. Yet Canada cannot grant permanent residency to everyone who entered through a temporary program.

Some will qualify through the points system. Others may receive status through special programs, humanitarian measures, or eventual amnesties. Many will be expected to leave, even after building significant parts of their lives in Canada.

Canada created expectations that its immigration system could not fulfil.

The older system placed heavy emphasis on human capital. Canada sought people whose education, experience, and specialized skills could address labour shortages while also raising productivity and tax revenue.

That did not mean every immigrant was wealthy or highly educated. It meant the system was designed around a long-term economic objective rather than the immediate needs of individual employers.

The newer system became much more responsive to businesses seeking workers for restaurants, warehouses, delivery services, retail outlets, and other lower-wage industries. Keller described this as operating immigration from the bottom of the labour market upward, rather than beginning with the most specialized and economically valuable skills.

This shift was often defended as a response to labour shortages. In some sectors, such as medicine, nursing, engineering, and the skilled trades, genuine shortages clearly exist. However, a shortage of people willing to perform a job at a particular wage does not necessarily mean that workers are unavailable. It may mean employers need to raise wages, improve working conditions, invest in technology, or redesign the job.

Temporary foreign labour offered employers another solution. Rather than improving the position, they could increase the supply of available workers.

That may benefit businesses and consumers. Restaurants can stay open later, delivery services remain inexpensive, and employers avoid the financial pressure that comes with a genuinely tight labour market.

But those benefits are accompanied by costs, and the costs tend to fall most heavily on people at the bottom of the income scale. Young workers, recent graduates, lower-income families, and newcomers already established in Canada are more likely to compete directly with a rapidly expanded pool of temporary labour.

Immigration policy began serving short-term business interests more effectively than it served a coherent national strategy.

The most troubling part of Canada’s immigration transformation is not simply that the policy changed. It is that the change occurred without a meaningful democratic mandate.

The Trudeau government did not campaign on creating a historically large temporary resident population. Provincial governments did not clearly ask voters to approve a post-secondary funding model increasingly dependent on international students. Canadians were not presented with a direct choice about the relationship between immigration levels, housing supply, wages, healthcare, and infrastructure.

The official opposition also remained largely silent while the system expanded. Keller said Conservative sources told him the party feared that criticism of immigration policy would be portrayed as hostility toward immigrants or evidence of racism.

That calculation may have been politically understandable, but it left Canadians without a serious parliamentary debate. The governing party implemented the policy, while the opposition avoided confronting it until public opinion had already shifted.

Canadians did not vote against the experiment and then watch governments ignore the result. They were never clearly asked whether they supported it in the first place.

By the time immigration became a major political concern, the consequences were already visible. Rental housing had become more difficult to secure, public services were struggling to keep pace, and many young Canadians were competing for jobs and homes in a country growing faster than its institutions could accommodate.

The public did not suddenly become hostile to immigration. The system changed, and public confidence changed with it.

A mature immigration debate requires a clear distinction between the people who came to Canada and the policies that brought them here.

A student working in a restaurant did not design the international student system. A temporary worker in a warehouse did not establish Canada’s population targets. A newcomer looking for affordable housing did not control municipal zoning or housing construction.

As Keller emphasized, the problem is the system, not the individual.

People came to Canada because they saw safety, opportunity, education, employment, and a chance to build better lives. Those motivations should be understandable to anyone fortunate enough to have Canadian citizenship.

The responsibility belongs to governments that created the rules, institutions that profited from the growth, employers that lobbied for access to workers, and political leaders who avoided a transparent public debate.

It is possible to support immigration while criticizing the way immigration is managed. In fact, public support for immigration may depend on governments demonstrating that the system is controlled, fair, and connected to the country’s actual capacity.

Canada cannot simply reverse the past several years. Millions of temporary residents are already here, and many have built lives, careers, and relationships in the country.

The government must now decide how many will be given a path to permanence, how quickly applications and refugee claims will be processed, and what will happen when temporary status expires. Some people will qualify to stay. Others will leave voluntarily. Some may remain without valid status unless enforcement becomes more effective.

Keller believes Canada should sharply reduce temporary inflows, restore a stronger emphasis on skilled permanent immigration, and end the use of temporary foreign workers for most low-wage jobs that are actually permanent positions. He recognizes limited exceptions, particularly in seasonal agriculture, where workers often do enter for a defined period and return home afterward.

None of these decisions will be easy. Amnesty may resolve some individual cases, but it could also encourage future applicants to believe that temporary rules will eventually be relaxed. Strict enforcement may uphold the law, but it will impose painful consequences on people who were encouraged to believe Canada offered them a pathway to stay.

Canada created this problem gradually, and it will take years to work through it.

The country’s previous immigration consensus was built on generosity, control, permanence, and public trust. Rebuilding that consensus will not require closing Canada to newcomers. It will require restoring an immigration system that is honest about limits, focused on integration, and capable of serving both newcomers and the people already living here.

Canada once understood that welcoming people and setting boundaries were not contradictory ideas.

It now needs to relearn that lesson.

This article is based on my conversation with Tony Keller, Globe and Mail columnist and author of Borderline Chaos. The full interview explores temporary migration, the Century Initiative, low-wage labour, housing, media accountability, and the future of Canada’s immigration system.